Wrangling over wolves

What happened in 2012: Wolves were delisted in Wyoming and legal hunting began for the first time since 1974.

Where things stand: Conservation groups filed three separate lawsuits
against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking to place wolves back
on the endangered species list. Hunters shot 41 wolves in the trophy
area and 23 in the predator area.

Coming in 2013: The Wyoming Game and Fish Department will continue
taking over management from the federal government and courts will
decide whether Wyoming’s wolf plan is sustainable.

He spends most of his fall outside in the mountains, so finding a wolf was not a matter of if, but when.

Like
most hunters, Joe Hargrave bought wolf tag to put in his pocket just in
case; he wasn’t wolf hunting, specifically. Hargrave had been elk
hunting in early October when he saw wolves lying in a meadow several
miles away. It took three hours to sneak up on the pack of seven.
Waiting in the trees, he chose one and shot.

On Oct. 5, just four
days after the season opened, Hargrave, a Dubois taxidermist and
outfitter, became one of Wyoming’s first hunters to legally kill a wolf
since 1974.

“It was pretty neat to be able to hunt them because
they’re a magnificent animal,” Hargrave said. “I like to see them in the
wild just like elk, moose and everything else. It is nice to be able to
have the opportunity to hunt them.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service removed wolves from the endangered species list in Wyoming on
Sept. 30, kicking off the first hunting season since wolves were placed
on the list in 1974. Since then, 41 wolves have been killed in 12
hunting areas, 23 killed in the predator zone and 39 killed by wildlife
officials for livestock damage. Conservation groups have filed three
lawsuits seeking to re-list the wolves; they are expected to be decided
sometime in 2013.

The season

Wyoming
was the last Rocky Mountain state to see wolves delisted. The Bush
administration removed Wyoming’s wolves in March 2008, but a judge
placed them back on four months later, citing the state’s failure to
ensure genetic interchange between Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.
The
Obama administration removed wolves from the endangered species list in
Montana and Idaho in 2011, but Wyoming’s wolves remained listed.

On
Sept. 30, the Fish and Wildlife Service once again removed wolves from
the list in Wyoming, saying the species was recovered in the Cowboy
State and the state’s management plan was sufficient.

The plan divides Wyoming into three areas:
A trophy game area in northwest Wyoming in which wolves will be regulated by a hunting season from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31.

A
small, seasonal-game area in northern Lincoln and Sublette counties in
which hunters need licenses for part of the year and can shoot them on
sight as predators the other part. Called the “flex zone,” it gives more
protection to wolves for a portion of the year as they move between
Wyoming and Idaho.
In the rest of the state, wolves will be considered predators, meaning they can be shot on sight.
Wyoming
is required to keep a minimum of 10 breeding pairs and 100 wolves
outside of Yellowstone National Park and the Wind River Indian
Reservation.

A minimum of five breeding pairs and 50 wolves are required inside Yellowstone.
The
plan allowed 52 wolves of the estimated 220 to 230 to be killed this
fall in northwest Wyoming outside of Yellowstone, Grand Teton National
Park, the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway, the National Elk Refuge
and the Wind River Reservation.

By Wednesday, the last time reported, 41 wolves had been killed in the trophy area. The season closes Monday.
“I
am extremely happy with how the harvest has been spread around the wolf
trophy game and management area,” said Brian Nesvik, chief of the
wildlife division for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “Even if we
come in under quota, it’s been a very successful season.”

Conservation
groups raised concern this fall when five wolves collared for research
purposes by wildlife officials in Yellowstone National Park were killed
by hunters in Montana. Wolf hunting is not allowed in Yellowstone or
Grand Teton national parks. In response, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and
Parks Commission closed areas north of Yellowstone to hunting this year.

Hunters have killed three wolves in Wyoming collared by either Yellowstone or Grand Teton national parks this fall, Nesvik said.

Wyoming
should consider following Montana’s lead and establish subunits around
the parks to help protect those wolves that may wander outside of the
parks during the hunting season, said Chris Colligan, Wyoming wildlife
advocate for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
Losing collared
wolves from the park is a loss of data, and shooting wolves from
national park packs can disrupt the stability of a pack, Colligan said.

“I
think where you draw the line is when there are harms to park resources
and if we get to the point where we can say there are these harms to
park resources, then hunting wolves may need to be closed in those
units,” Colligan said.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission would have to decide if Wyoming needs a buffer around the parks.
“Biologically, there is no difference to the population between taking a collared wolf versus a noncollared wolf,” Nesvik said.

The lawsuits

Days
after the Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wyoming’s wolf decision,
Earthjustice filed a notice of intent to sue. About two months later the
nonprofit environmental law firm filed a lawsuit against the Fish and
Wildlife Service in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Defenders of
Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the
Natural Resources Defense Council.
The groups say Wyoming’s wolf
management plan is too aggressive, especially by allowing wolves to be
shot on sight in 85 percent of the state, said Mike Leahy, Rockies and
Plains director for Defenders of Wildlife.

Wyoming estimated about
32 wolves lived in the predator zone before hunting began. As of
Wednesday, 23 wolves had been killed in the predator zone.

Nevik said that was about the number wildlife officials anticipated would be killed.
It’s not about the number killed this year but about the overall plan, Leahy said.
“The
state’s goal is clearly to eliminate all wolves from the predator zone
and prevent them from ever recovering there,” he said. “The state is
simply ignoring its obligation, or refusing its obligation, to manage
wolves through the state that includes really important wolf habitat in
national forest and on federal lands.”

Since Earthjustice filed its lawsuit, two other similar suits have been filed.
The
second lawsuit was filed in the end of November by Alliance for the
Wild Rockies, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Conservation Congress,
Friends of Animals, Friends of the Clearwater, National Wolfwatcher
Coalition, Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians.
The
final lawsuit was filed in mid-December in Washington, D.C., by the
Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals.

The
first time groups sued — and won — over Wyoming’s wolves, 12 groups
joined the same lawsuit, including several of the groups suing
separately this time.
On Dec. 21, a federal judge in Washington,
D.C., merged two of the lawsuits filed by separate coalitions of groups.
The lead group in one lawsuit is Defenders of Wildlife, while the lead
in the other is the Humane Society of the United States.

The third lawsuit is still pending in federal court in Denver.
There is no advantage to suing separately, said Ralph Henry, the Humane Society’s deputy director of litigation.

The future

Shooting
his wolf this year was easier than Hargrave expected. He wonders if
it’s because they haven’t been shot at in decades in Wyoming.
Even
over the course of the season he noticed a change in their behavior.
They’re already smarter and more skittish than they were in the
beginning.

“They’re going to get harder to find and stay in the
timber during the day,” Hargrave said. “The more we hunt them the more
they will wise up to what’s going on.”
In the meantime, lawsuits
will move through the court system. The Fish and Wildlife Service filed a
motion to have the Earthjustice lawsuit moved from Washington, D.C., to
Wyoming. A decision on the motion is still pending.

Henry hopes a decision comes before the beginning of the 2013 wolf hunting season.
Wyoming
will continue to manage wolves in the state, learning the ropes from
Fish and Wildlife Service biologists. Wyoming wildlife officials plan to
collar about 25 to 30 wolves each year. The numbers will help officials
keep track of wolf numbers and plan quotas for hunting seasons, Nesvik
said. Officials will also monitor genetics to show if wolves are
successfully moving between populations in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

The
state budgeted about $600,000 for wolf management for the first two
years. During the 2012 hunting season it sold 4,469 licenses and made
$112,518 from the sales that will contribute to management, Nesvik said.

The trophy season ends Monday. Whether it opens again Oct. 1 will be up to the courts to decide.

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

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Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

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“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone